As its reputation for outstanding fishing and fine hospitality spread, Ballyeffin Lodge could have attracted such famous anglers as Zane Grey, Ernest Hemingway, and Roger Daltrey. But it probably didn’t. It could also have had them as guests, but that probably never happened either. They could have, whilst staying here, written a famous song, or a novella, or a novel. But they probably wouldn’t have, even if they had stayed. But, of course, they most likely never did.
Initially the lodge was not yet a lodge. It was just a shack constructed in 1836 with chunks of cut bog, the peat from the Ballyeffin Boglands. The blocks were laid in the traditional herringbone fashion of the time and, apparently, course upon course of the blocky chunks looked very sexy, as many had commented at the time in the visitors book. Conditions were spartan; guests slept in sacks of straw and peat-bedding, much like cattle of today. However, the Lodge’s fame and reputation grew and the visitors book read like an angler’s version of ‘Stubbs Gazette’.
For 160 years the anglers kept coming back. The Lodge stayed very much the same: a little repair here, another there. However, in 1996, the present owner Seamus O’Tumaltaigh fell under a passing bus. With the windfall from that near tragedy he purchased the Lodge and dragged it, and it’s clientele, kicking and screaming into the 21 Century. Ballyeffin Lodge now oozes sex appeal, the smell of money, and is a magnet for the rich and famous. Fishing has been banned and Lamborghinis are now de rigueur. The Ballyeffin Lamborghini Owners Club ponces about here most days.
Read more: The Camels of Ballyeffin Bog
